Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SOCIAL IDENTITY AS A THREAT TO SECURITY
did not even have a fax machine) could possibly think of it as an enforcer of any
universal bill of rights’ (Robertson 2000: 50–51). Robertson concedes that the HRC
and CERD ‘views’ have had some success in informing legal cases in some countries
but, of course, those countries are not the ones where the most serious human rights
violations are occurring. The ICC may, in time, do more than try a few high profile
vanquished ‘bad guys’ like Milosevic and Goering and become a genuine, evenhanded
arbiter of global justice.
The 1981 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) is, on the face of it, impressively universal, having amassed some
172 ratifications by 2003. Robertson, however, argues that CEDAW is far less
influential than its close relation the 1969 Convention on the Elimination of all forms
of Racial Discrimination owing to the number and nature of reservations to its
provisions lodged by the ratifying parties (Robertson 2000: 94). The most frequently
derogated from Articles are 5 and 16 which deal with, respectively, the role of women
in relation to customs/culture and the family. Since these two factors are those that
most threaten the security of women this is a serious limitation on the Convention’s
effectiveness. Hence the sex discrimination inherent in certain aspects of Sharia law
as applied in some Islamic states is out of the reach of the Convention. It should be
added, however, that many Western European states have ratified with reservations
and that the USA has not ratified at all.
Despite this, the 1981 Convention is not a paper tiger and it has made a contribution
to protecting the rights of women. The Committee on the Elimination of
all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee), set up by the
Convention, is at the heart of an international regime which, at least to a limited extent,
empowers individual women in a number of countries with rights not adequately
covered in the twin Human Rights covenants. An optional protocol to CEDAW was
adopted in 1999 and by 2003 had been ratified by 49 states, giving the CEDAW
Committee the power to pursue cases brought by individual women in those states.
Even among those states who have ratified CEDAW but not the optional protocol,
the Convention has on occasion been cited in defence of women in domestic legal
cases. The Constitution of Brazil, for example, has been amended to bring it into
line with the provisions (IFUW 1999). The 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination
of Violence Against Women and the ‘Platform for Action’ agreed at the 1995 Beijing
Conference have deepened the range of global norms concerning women’s rights but
these instruments lack the legal force of the CEDAW regime, limited though that is.
Violence and wider discrimination based on sex remains endemic in much of the
world and a great deal remains to be done to properly secure women.
Women
Even more clearly than with women’s rights, the difficulties of overcoming cultural
differences in establishing global standards are apparent when considering the rights
Homosexuals
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